Banks in Luxembourg have confirmed their decision to migrate all national retail transfers to the EBA Clearing's pan-European Step2 platform.
Through this migration, Luxembourgish banks will use one single platform for handling both their national and European credit transfers.
The migration of the Luxembourg domestic transfers is expected to be completed by September 2006 - four years ahead of the European Community deadline of 2010 for the creation of a Single European Payments Area (Sepa).
EBA Clearing has also finalised an agreement with the major Italian banks for processing their domestic transfers on the Step2 platform. The Association has additionally signed a memorandum of understanding with the Spanish banking community and is conducting discussions with Finnish banks.
Says José Beltran, director Step2 dervices in EBA Clearing: "The migration of the domestic transfers of Italy and of Luxembourg are the first steps of a wider migration of euro payments traffic from the old national infrastructures to a pan-European infrastructure."